I have long dreamed of a set of popular history books that could be used by every school child and for that matter, every parent, which would give a readable overview of the human story quite obviously, the greatest story there could ever be. Each book in the set would be aimed at an increasingly more detailed and complex level, but the narrative would be consistent and essentially the same. Starting at a level suitable for very young children (Key stage 1) and progressing in complexity until suitable for A Level, this set of books would equip every citizen with the basic human time-line, starting with the big bang some 14.7 billion years ago, progressing through to the formation of our own solar system 5 billion years ago, onto the emergence of single cell life 3.5 billion years ago, and then proceeding through the major steps of organic evolution, including of course, our own transition from ape to man.

This dream is unlikely to be fulfilled until the last vestiges of religious superstition have been removed from the corridors of power. Classical Greek philosophy, the golden age of Arabic and Asiatic scientific learning, and the so called European Enlightenment of the18th century were the first faltering steps in the long process of replacing superstition and religious bigotry with rational thought and scientific enquiry but still, many centuries later, the religious witch-doctors, priests, imams and rabbis hold enormous sway. Can you believe it, that in the 21st century, there is still a substantial body of thought across the planet, including supposedly enlightened nations in the West, that hold to the belief that the Earth is only 10,000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed at the very same time. And hey presto, a magical creator waved a wand and brought everything into immutable being. Unbelievable I know, yet these purveyors of superstitious fairytales are embedded in very influential positions of government in the USA. One such person may even be President in a few months time. In many Islamic countries this gobbledegook is taught as orthodox science. And even in the UK, some academies and Free Schools are starting to peddle this medieval trash to our children, and to make matters worse it is our taxes that are paying for it.

It’s all a very depressing picture, but one that is made immeasurably brighter when a book like E.O. Wilson’s Social Conquest of Earth comes along. Here is the sort of scientific author who should be immediately drafted in to work on that set of universal history books that I spoke of earlier. I am aware that there is a looming controversy involving social biologists with our very own Richard Dawkins getting very hot under the collar. I am in no way qualified to get involved in that scientific spat other than to suggest that on the surface, Wilson’s position does seem more dialectical and therefore more plausible than that of Dawkins. In the broadest terms, Wilson is positing that genetic evolution takes place on a multi-level, both by individual and group selection. Dawkins I understand is having none of it, insisting that genetic selection takes place solely on an individual or kin basis.

Since much of the details of evolutionary science is still at the speculative stage, and, given the fragmentary evidence available, will likely stay that way, it is enough for the lay person to simply stay abreast of the main controversies without necessarily taking sides. Having said that, the implications of Wilson’s thesis does have a major bearing on how we humans might have developed our collective traits and more significantly, what we might be capable of in the future. Using Wilson’s own words the matter can be put clearly and succinctly:

The interpretation of human selection forces I have presented in The Social Conquest of Earth opposes the theory of inclusive fitness and replaces it with standard models of population genetics applied to multiple levels of natural selection. Inclusive fitness is based on kin selection, in which individuals tend to cooperate with one another, or not, according to how close they are genealogically. This mode of selection, if defined broadly enough, was thought to explain all forms of social behaviour. The opposing explanation was fully developed from 2004 to 2010. P289

Wilson continues:

Group selection is clearly the process for advanced social behaviour. It also possesses the two elements necessary for evolution. First, group-level traits, including cooperativeness, empathy, and patterns of networking, have been found to be heritable in humans that is, they vary genetically in some degree from one person to the next. And second, cooperation and unity manifestly affect the survival of groups that are competing.P290

I warm to the notion of both group as well as individual genetic selection but whether the traits of cooperation and empathy can be attributed principally to genetics rather than culture is quite another matter. To be fair to Wilson, he does regularly refer to the concept to co-evolution suggesting that both genetics and culture are responsible for our human nature but I get the distinct impression that Wilson puts the genetic component in the driving seat and I cannot help but rile against this geneticist approach. This is probably because too many reactionary philosophers and politicians have hitched their wagons to the genetic school of thought in order to justify their anti-socialist dogmas.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that Wilson fits into this rag-bag army. Quite the opposite. But Wilson does tend to down play the notion of free will in favour of a genetic determinism which rankles with me. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the dialectic at work here but rather, as to be expected of a social geneticist, his emphasis is always on the humble gene as opposed to the our inherited culture. If I am mis-representing Wilson in this respect, I humbly apologise.

Anyway, enough of the nature-nurture controversy it has been debated ad-infinitum over the decades. The real joy of Wilson’s work is to be found not so much in his genetic theorising but in his breath-taking narratives. A condensed version of Part II of his book would make a wonderful preamble to any social history of the human race. I’ve read it numerous times already and I just keep getting the urge to re-read it again and again, savouring each and every line.

In the chapter, Threading the Evolutionary Maze, Wilson isolates seven key adaptions that hominoids had to make in order to reach our current position of ascendancy. Firstly we had to adapt to existence on land which of course involved the ability to move comfortably on two feet. The second adaption was to develop a brain large enough that could develop the skill of reasoning and culture. Thirdly, we needed the adaption of grasping hands that could eventually hold and manipulate detached objects. Fourthly, we needed to adapt to meat eating in order to fuel our mental evolution and most significantly, leading on from that, the ability to form highly organised groups in the collective harvesting of that meat supply. Equally significant was the adaption to controlling fire and the subsequent ability to cook that socially hunted meat. Cooking meat on a fire in a social environment was a gigantic step on our evolutionary journey. Wilson suggests that this became a universal means of social bonding. Finally, not that that word should ever really be used in respect to human evolution, came the division of labour that started in the hunting and cooking process and leapt ahead during the eventual evolution to agriculture and settled societies.

These stages and adaptions, interchangeable perhaps, and the results of a complex dynamic between genetic inheritance and cultural adaption, form the absolute foundations of the human story, yet ask any school kid, or even their science and history teachers, to outline this evolutionary foundation, and most would stare back with blank faces. Ask them about Roman or Greek artefacts and they will list them off rote fashion without the slightest understanding of where it all came from or what it might all signify. Our teaching of both human history and science is truly archaic, truly prehistoric.

Simply listing these genetic and cultural adaptions does not do Wilson’s narrative full justice. That can only be done by getting your hands on this enlightening text and reading it yourself at leisure and in comfort. But I cannot sign off without giving a little taster of what is in store. Wilson’s words can give you a lift in the same way that Engels preamble to The DIalectics of Nature can lift the spirits. Savour this if you will:

Humanity is a magnificent but fragile achievement. Our species is still more impressive because we are the culmination of an evolutionary epic that was continuously played out in great peril. Most of the time our ancestral populations were very small; of a size that in the course of mammalian history, typically carried a probability of early extinction. All the pre-human bands taken together made up a population of at most a few tens of thousands of individuals. Very early, the pre-human ancestors split into two or more at a time. During this period the average life of a mammalian species was only half a million years. In conformity to that principle, most of the pre-human collateral lines vanished. The one destined to give rise to modern humanity veered close to extinction itself at least once and possible many times over the past half million years. The epic might easily have ended at any such constriction, gone forever in a geological eye-blink. It could have happened during a severe drought at the wrong time and place, or an alien disease sweeping into the population from surrounding animals, or pressure from other, more competitive primates. There would have then followed nothing. The evolution of the biosphere would have pulled back, never again to produce what we became. P13/14

Part hard science, part scientific speculation, but either way, a sobering account of just how fragile pre-human existence once was, and a reminder of just how miraculous our evolutionary journey has been. We must now hope that our cooperative group instincts, be they genetically or culturally inherited, prove stronger than our individual selfish instincts, for otherwise we could all be heading down the plughole of biological extinction, and just at a time when our social and technological prospects were never greater.